FTSE 100 hits three-week high.

Roll out the brandy butter and put on the party hats.

The London stock market has closed, and won’t reopen until Tuesday 28th.

It was a fairly subdued day’s trading, in truth. The FTSE 100 index of blue-chip shares has closed 13 points higher at 6254, a gain of 0.2%. Investors didn’t have much more to give, after driving shares up strongly yesterday.

Trading volumes were thin – with just 110 million shares bought and sold, compared to almost 600m yesterday.

But that’s still the highest close on the FTSE 100 since December 3rd. Not an epic Santa Rally, but better than a cold snowball in the face.

The FTSE 100 over the last three monthsPhotograph: Thomson Reuters

International packaging firm Mondi topped the FTSE 100 leaderboard – which rather sums up the humdrum nature of today’s trading session.

It was followed by BP, boosted by the recent recovery in the oil price, and mining firm Anglo American, which announced the sale of a coal mine in Australia to bolster its cash reserves.

Top risers and fallers in London todayPhotograph: Thomson Reuters

London outperformed the rest of Europe – at least those parts where stock markets were still open. Over in Paris, the CAC 40 closed down 0.3%, or 15 points, at 4659.

Volumes are thin across Europe today, with some markets already shut for the holidays.

However, in London the session has seen the FTSE 100 add some small gains to its tally for the week, having seen a decent bounce over the last two days. Even now, miners are in the news, having dominated the agenda so much of late. Anglo American has managed to add some small change to its dwindling cash pile as it sells off a coal mine in Australia – disposals were a key theme for miners in recent months, and the fire sale will continue into the New Year.

It has not been a great year for the FTSE 100, which is currently down almost 5% since January, with the FTSE 250 coming out with an 8% gain so far.

And with that, dear readers, I have an appointment with Oxford Street. Hope you have a super Christmas. See you again soon. GW

12.49pm GMT

Love him or hate him, Yanis Varoufakis was undoubtedly one of the key figures of this year.

Some see the former Greek finance minister as a valiant champion of anti-austerity polities, others blame him for driving Greece back into recession, capital controls and a tough third bailout.

As the man himself tells the Guardian:

“I regret that we were a failure. A heroic failure, but a failure nonetheless.”

And with Varoufakis planning to launch a new political movement soon, we’ll surely hear more from him in 2016. Here’s our profile:

Raindrops are now slouching their way down the windows of City offices, helping to dampen festive spirits among traders who made the trip into work.

European markets are generally under a cloud too, with the Stoxx 600 index (which tracks the 600 biggest companies in Europe) now down 0.2%.

11.31am GMT

Rather like a festive reveller*, the London stock market is stumbling as it enters the final lap before Christmas.

The FTSE 100 is now up a measly 1 point, with one hour to go until the early Christmas finish. And oil’s early rally is fizzling out too….

* – or so I hear….

11.23am GMT

Greece’s Syntagma square has been decorated for Christmas, despite the prospect of fresh austerity measures in 2016.Photograph: Nikolas Georgiou/ZUMA Press/Corbis

11.13am GMT

Rather like the Ghost of Christmas Past, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has made a festive appearance…..and dished out some rather unfestive comments.

Speaking to Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, Varoufakis claimed that Greece’s eurozone partners had deliberately forced the country into a third bailout by refusing to engage with the reforms he proposed.

As Varoufakis put it:

“It was a pure coup, one big coup. And that has succeeded

As regular readers know all too well, the Greek saga played out at a series of crunch meetings in Brussels between Yanis and his fellow finance ministers.

And he tells de Volkskrant that Germany’s representative, Wolfgang Schäuble, was to blame.

He’s the puppet master who pulls all the strings. All the other ministers are marionettes. Schäuble is the grandmaster of the Eurogroup. He decides who becomes the president, he determines the agenda, he controls everything.”

In contrast, eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem is dismissed as “a soldier, a puppet …

It’s been a busy year for many brokers as borrowers take advantage of exceptionally low mortgage rates and seek guidance through the more complicated application process created by the Mortgage Market Review.

‘Remortgaging numbers in particular are rising, as borrowers wonder whether 2016 will finally bring that first interest rate rise for several years. While we are not convinced it will, those who would struggle to pay their mortgage if rates rise should consider a fixed rate. There are still some excellent deals to tempt borrowers although we may have seen the back of the very cheapest products.

10.05am GMT

Despite today’s rally, Brent crude is still almost 50% lower than in May when it traded hands at $69 per barrel.

For all the talk of an oil price bounce Brent Crude Oil is still only US $37.50! Who thought that a year ago? #DISINFLATION

This chart, via CMC’s Jasper Lawler, shows how the amount of oil in storage climbed this year, forcing producers to cut the number of rigs in use:

The green line shows US oil inventories.
The orange line is the Baker Hughes rig count
The blue background is the oil pricePhotograph: CMC Markets / Bloomberg

It all started 13 months ago, when the Opec cartel decided to leave production levels unchanged in an apparent attempt to drive rivals out of business.

As Jasper points out, this cunning wheeze hasn’t really worked yet:

OPEC’s wily plan to keep supplying the market with oil, drive prices to a level that will bankrupt the competition, which will in turn reduce output and lead to price recovery is taking a little longer than first imagined.

Just like its meeting over a year ago, the latest meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) in December sent the oil price to new multi-year lows. This time OPEC failed to even agree on a quota. An apparent row between Saudi Arabia and Iran has led to the removal of any kind of production ceiling, which previously stood at 30m bpd.

So at least until the next OPEC meeting in the summer, oil prices must reflect no production ceiling. Oil plummeted 40% after OPEC’s decision in November 2014; an equivalent percentage plunge from the time of the December 2015 meeting would take it to around $25 per barrel.

9.36am GMT

Manezhnaya Square in Moscow.Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

The Russian government will be pleased to see the oil price rallying this morning, given its reliance on crude exports.

The Russian currency has now dipped below 70 rubles to the US dollar, having hit a record low of 71.17 earlier this week.

As this chart shows, the ruble has been through a torrid year, matching the slumping in the oil price:

The ruble vs the US dollar in 2014 and 2015Photograph: Thomson Reuters

Russia’s latest budget is based on an oil price of $50 per barrel, which looks rather optimistic given the current prices.

Analysts believe Moscow can cope, unless the rouble weakens by another third or so….

Retailers will now be hoping that the prospect of bargains will get people shopping.

As analyst Nick Bubb says:

Apart from the wild-eyed men traditionally spotted in the perfume halls of the big department stores today, few people will need to pay full price for anything in the shops today and Online shoppers will be able to get stuck into the John Lewis Clearance Sale from 5pm onwards…

Volumes are expected to be thin over the next few hours, whilst data that might actually deliver any meaningful direction is also going to be hard to come by.

8.34am GMT

A mince pie for Augustin Eden of Accendo Markets, who says that traders are “getting into the petroleum spirit of Christmas” today as they push oil higher.

8.26am GMT

The rising oil price has helped push shares higher in Australia, where the stock market enjoyed a pre-Christmas bounce.

The S&P/ASX 200 index jumped by 1.2%, its seventh consecutive day of gains.

Energy shares led the rally, on relief that oil prices were bouncing back from their 11-year lows:

Biggest risers on the Australian stock market todayPhotograph: Thomson Reuters

8.18am GMT

The oil price is also benefitting from the news that US oil drillers reined in production last week.

There were just 538 oil rigs in active service this week, three fewer than the previous week, according to the latest Baker Hughes rig count.

A year ago, there were 961 – before the slump in oil prices forced many producers to cut back.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs predicts that output will fall in 2016:

The current rig count is… pointing to U.S. production declining sequentially between 2Q15 and 4Q15 by 320,000 barrels per day.”

Updated at 8.19am GMT

8.02am GMT

Oil price jumps in pre-Christmas rally

After hitting eleven-year lows this week, the oil price is staging a rally this morning.

Crude prices are up in early trading, after new data showed fewer barrels are sitting in storage than expected.

Brent crude is leading the charge – a barrel of North Sea oil has jumped by 1.1%, or 44 cents, to $37.87.

US crude is up almost 1% at $37.83.

Angus Nicholson of IG says:

Judging by the moves in oil overnight, one could be forgiven for thinking that Santa’s sleigh runs on Light-Sweet Cushing, Oklahoma Crude.

But that’s not the real reason, kids.

Instead the rally has been sparked by America’s Energy Information Administration, which reported yesterday that oil inventories fell by 5.9 million barrels last week.

The market had expected a rise of 1.1 million, so investors are revising their concerns about oversupply problems.

But there are still 484.78 million barrels in storage, according to the EIA, which is nearly a record high….

Updated at 8.18am GMT

7.48am GMT

Introduction: It’s starting to look a lot like…..

A Paris department store, decked up for Christmas.Photograph: Jacques Brinon/AP

Good morning, and a Merry Christmas to you.

After a dramatic year, we’ve finally reached the last trading day before the festive break.

Some hardy traders are heading to their desks in the City, where the stock market will shut down at lunchtime.

But there may be more drama on the high streets, with retailers expecting plenty of shoppers ahead of tomorrow’s festivities. They’ll also be catching their breath after Wednesday — which was the busiest shopping day of the year:

Last night, European markets staged a strong rally – with the FTSE 100 surging by 2.6%.

Today will probably be quieter, with shares likely to be little changed in London, Paris and Madrid. It’s going to be particularly quiet in Frankfurt or Milan too; the German and Italian markets are closed.